An interesting picture I found online that somewhat reminds me of the ‘making-do’ lecture. Every day we have to make-do with reality where oreo biscuits are getting smaller!

I had never understood the true intention of this course. Until today’s lecture.

Adrian’s last lecture have really made an impression. It changes 360 degrees of my view on this course. I guess you could say this is a very suitable finale.

His sentence that literally blew my mind was “Content is not king. Just like Facebook. There is no content. Nothing is inside. We are the one who make content.”

Exactly at the last point where ‘we are the one who make content’, I start to realize the whole point of this course. The clue was so obvious yet I was somehow distracted by Korsakow. The title, Integrated Media.

Integrated is defined as united as a whole. The best tool to unite all media? The Internet. Which leads me to online media, or otherwise known as social media.

I’m sure at some point in this course we felt that “this whole thing is way too abstract. I’m not even sure of what I’m learning. There is absolutely nothing I can think of from what I have learnt in this course.”

To have this sort of thinking means you are already on the right track.

Just like what Adrian said about Facebook. This course have no exact content. So, it’s not wrong to think that you have learnt nothing.

Unlike other courses which have topics and readings per week all lay out for you from A to Z, this course attempts to challenge ourselves to think of what content we want to make by using online media.

Hence, we are free to do whatever we want. You can record anything you like for your sketch media, or for your group K-film. You can choose whichever interface you are comfortable with.

There are no boundaries. There are no right or wrong. As long as you think it makes sense, then it’s the right content for you.

We are no longer children who need to be taught on how to eat or walk or talk. We are media students, who will soon become media leaders where we choose what content to be publish.

What this course have done is preparing us to be ready to be opinion leaders. This course is simply equipping us with the tacit knowledge, providing us with experiences to prepare for the real world where there is no guideline anymore. There will no longer be a lecturer or blackboard to refer to.

Hence, we have Korsakow assessments. As mentioned before, Korsakow is a multi-linear narrative structure. Which ties back with our learning on webpages (from Networked Media) and the point of ‘no exact content’.

The reason of these assessments is to think critically on how to use online media. A Korsakow or a webpage by itself have zero content.It is up to us to decide what content to fill in.

This course also reminds us that in an Internet platform where there is no beginning, middle and end, how do we structure the information/content in a way that our audience can understand without the need to look for the beginning?

This is why our sketch videos are done individually without knowing that we need to combine them. They are self-contained contents. Videos that can tell a story on its own. But when we put all videos together in Korsakow, we are creating new story for our audience = creating new content.

What I am trying to say is, we are the one in charge. We are the one who creates content. We choose what we want to do with the online media, and we ‘make-do’ to ensure the content is there. One good example is how we all uses the same Korsakow software but everyone will have different videos, layouts, themes, and messages that they want to convey.

It is up to our audience to find the patterns.

Lecture notes:

Closure.
To change your understanding.
Qualitative change, not a quantitative.
To ‘be’?
What does it mean to be a writer?
What is it to ‘be’ online?
Insane business model. From our click on Facebook, we help several people to become billionaire.

Its not a hierarchy. We like to think that we are the top of the food chain.
The cognitive model – not about facts, true or false. It’s about difference. Certain people. This is the model we use for korsakow.

The Internet is a series of protocols, procedures. Simply ways of doing stuffs. Same like how you order a beer. There’s steps.
It’s a tacit knowledge. Knowing how to do. You got to do it.
What sort of services do we need?
RSC. Written by anybody in the world. There’s no company, agency that owns it.
Tools always need a hand. They are cheap. And easy to find the equipment to make.
If I know the social protocols, I can easily use the tools.
Peer networks. Olden days we can’t even get direct reply from specialist in our desired fields. We had to go through their secretary. Now we can just email them.
That’s why we blog. That’s why we upload our blog online. So people in the world can see what we have done.
It’s no longer the case of a single object. This course is trying to shift away from that model (where one thing matters only).
Hence, we use korsakow. Multilinear narratives.
Think of how things can join rather than what it must join.
You have permission to let things change if they need to.
Listen to the things that needs change.
You talk with the tool, and they talk back!
Things have their own material affordances. They push back.
Being able to drive fast vs Jackie steward.
Realize that things always want to be different than themselves.
Master chef was an instant hit. How to create repetition of the same without being sued.

Designers are usually at the bottom of a food chain. They are the last we think of when we have a company. They are decorative artists.

Architectures think they owned the project.

Both can’t think what responds to the other line (in the lecture slides). They have no initiative. We invest everything on the left side (the artifact). We never think of the audience.
Whats on the other side of the line?
Experience!
Instead of thinking about things, we think about relationships. Between the things and people.
Think about facebook, twitter, flickr, tumblr. Non of them make things at all! They are just there for services and experience.
Apple. We think they apple make stuffs (iPad iTunes Mac). When the first iPod came out its about 3x the price of normal mp3.
Everyone thinks no one will buy because of the expensive price.
It’s no longer about the THING! iPod boxes, beautiful design. It’s about the experience of taking the boxes home and unboxing it.
It doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be so simple.
People is wiling to pay 3x the price for the experience.
It doesnt do anything different with it. It just makes experience better (iPad to read newspaper, watch movie).
Users don’t know what they want.

BMW. It’s about experience design. They want to relationship to extend beyond the object.
Uncle george. 15 years ago, I can do business by recording videos and convert it into DVD.
Uncle george got a dslr and iMovie and will be recording my wedding for free! The couples don’t care. They just want a home movie. Why pay 5 grand?
Explain how you will make their wedding grand. A beautifully packaged thing than just a box and DVD. That’s how you get sales. Service and experience.
I’ll create a website for you, just for your wedding. Why you want to upload on YouTube where random people can comments? You can send links of your website to your friends too. Service again.

“You should have seen the package we have got. Omg it’s to die for.” spread through word of mouth.

This course wants us to think what’s in the other side of the line for you.
Content is not king. They are wrong. Email is all about people communicating with with each other. Just like Facebook. There is no content. Nothing is inside. Is how we use it. We use it to communicate with our friends. We upload contents.

We don’t need products. We just need a online platform. We don’t need distribution. The Internet itself is whole network of distribution.

The lesson for this course is simple. This subject is modeled based on your experience. And not content. This course provide some notion of the experience. Let you smell it, taste it feel it. Its about tacit knowledge. Knowing how and knowing how to be. Which is very hard to accessed.

It’s about looking forward. Where you want to be next?
Uncle George will do just fine. Software to automatically detect what to edit and what to cut. And it looks fine.

Then why do we still need editors? Where will this role go in the next 15 years? What do we have on the other side on the line?

The end of semester is near. With Week 12 starting today, there’s a lot of catching up to do with my group videos. As listed in the assessment criteria where 60 videos are the minimum, our group aim to produce at least 65 or 70 videos (hopefully) for us to get a better mark for that criteria (ranging from bad to outstanding).

Today I managed to record these videos:

1. Lane ways (extras from previous week)
2. Busker (duo-singer and guitarists)
3. Royal Arcade
4. Block Arcade
5. Busker (gold robot-ish statue)
6. Busker (band performance in Bourke St)
7. Bourke St

I did not complete the Bourke St footage and did not went to Southern Cross Station to get more footage as my digital camera run out of memory. Seems like a HD 720p video is too much for a 4GB memory stick to handle. Total duration I can record is only 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Sigh.

I am transferring the videos now and will be heading to Uni later for editing. I feel like I am spending too much time with this video task, having an essay for another course due next week with 2000 words and not even started anything yet.

So, the assessment criteria for the group K-film is up. Grab it here while it’s still hot.

From what I have read through, it seems that we will need to establish an opening page that contains all the links to the essay, the work, and credits. I assume this is what Seth had told us in previous tutorial class about having the index.html page.

It makes me wonder though, as there is a criteria from bad to outstanding for this opening page. Does this implies to the number of references we have (if there is any)? Or is this criteria on the index.html design?

Initially, I thought of just putting the credits in the simplest form of basic html page. I guess it’s time to dig back the old notes from Networked Media and create something outstanding.

What a week. New things that we need to include in our K-film project:

• create a new and SEPARATE index.html.
• will have:
• links to your essay
• links to your k-film
• credits to the k-film
• everything about copy right
• link to your korsakow project

And we finally got the 5% bonus by showing Seth two prototypes of our K-film.

Initially it was supposed to be due last week in tutorial class but I mistaken the “two interface” as literally two interfaces inside the Korsakow. Thankfully, Seth gave us a chance to show him our 2nd prototype today and he was happy with it!

Here’s how our first prototype looks like:

Pretty basic layout. I really like the video thumbnail icons. They represents the video content and at the same time act as categories/keyword. Seth doesn’t really see the relevance of ‘collage’ with our thumbnails, and wasn’t sure about the one soundtrack that loops for the entire K-film.

As we were brainstorming for ideas on the second prototype interface, Emelia suggests an interesting idea of having a map as a background. She designed a draft that goes like this:

Yu-Ann and I felt that the interface resembles more like a highway than a city. After a few refining on the draft with ideas from Yu-Ann, we end up with this interface:

Can I say it’s the most beautiful interface that I have created? Haha. All of us really like this prototype, and with Seth’s approval, we had chosen this prototype as our final project. The icons on the map are clickable thumbnails to the next video. We are still using the same thumbnail icon concept, but this time they have a more sense of collage when it is scattered around the map. Our project is also named as “The city through a window pane”, as the collage kind of remind us of a window structure. Hence the balcony picture in our prototype.

However, Seth recommend that we place the balcony in the middle of the K-film so that it doesn’t appear to be “pushed” to the top. He also suggest that there might be too many things happening in the background with all the thumbnail colours and the curtains and the flower pot. Kind of moving away from the main video. Interesting point to discuss in our next group meeting.

The thumbnails also appears to be too large for the preview window. Will need to fix that up. We also chose to put background music for each videos instead of one soundtrack for the whole K-film. Andddd now we are halfway there.

Notes from week 11′s lecture:

339

Collage is pieces of other things. Their edges don’t meet.

Really interesting point brought up in the Shields reading. From what I understand by linking point 339 with point 333 on mosaic, it means the broken dishes are connected to each other yet their “edges”, which I believe to  be the patterns, will not meet.

Meaning that there should be a clear break down on the broken dishes. The collage is made up of the broken dishes but the pattern will be different from its original form. That’s what it meant by the edges don’t meet (means it can’t be formed as the original form where the edges that is broken fit together).

Here’s what I did with a busker video:

Although each frames consist of what we would consider a full human body (the head, the body and the leg), yet the “edges” does not meet together.

Or, in a more literal way, the borders of the collage doesn’t meet. Which is what all our videos will have. Just like the busker video above, our videos will have the spacing/black border to distinguish the pieces apart.

It might be too confusing if the frames are all stack together.

Okay, remember what I said about our new theme being “the city is busy”? Well, let’s forget that ever happen.

Our K-film theme is now:

“The city is a collage!”

And hopefully this time it’s here to stick around.

Time to edit videos!

Notes from week 9′s lecture: